El Reg's comments policy? It's all in moderation

The Register has changed its comments moderation policy, making the UK's biggest IT pro talking shop even more immediate, enthralling and noisy.

As of right now we have moved to a hybrid moderation model for comments.

Over 95 per cent of comments will go straight on to the site, rather than being individually moderated by our team of highly trained but increasingly goggle-eyed editors.

Any comments subsequently reported by Reg readers will be quickly examined, and if found to contravene our house rules, will be zapped, vapourised, smoked, eradicated. And worse.

Anyone who has a comment reported and zapped will be on probation, and their future contributions will be subject to pre-moderation. Should they demonstrate by their future compliance that the zapped comment was an aberration, they will in time be released from the naughty step and their comments will progress straight to the front page.

Be warned though, repeated probations could lead to permanent zapping. Which will hurt you more than it hurts us.

Other than recalcitrant rule breakers, newer commenters will be subject to pre-moderation, until they've proven their credentials with five compliant posts.

We've also added a handy corrections mechanism so that you can flag up mistakes by the Reg hackery. We don't publish comments flagging up our mistakes, but rest assured that the hacks concerned will get what's coming to them.

We've done all this because we trust our readers to do, and write, the right thing. We're sure it'll cement The Register's comment threads' status as the best place on the internet to discuss the finer points of tech, science, politics and of course medieval siege weaponry.